Pocket is Purgatory for articles

By Josh Sherman

22 Jan 2016

1
min read

reading

Read it later? More like read it never.

It all started out innocently enough. I started to use Pocket to stash articles
so I wouldn’t be sidetracked while I was working. I would go back and catch up
on the day’s articles that evening or the next morning.

As time went on, I found that I was pocketing more and more articles. I also
wasn’t reading them nearly as diligently as I once was. The result? My Pocket
account ended up becoming a wasteland of articles I was never going to read.

To help this along, I started to purge the older articles periodically without
reading them. Slowly I started to rationalize why I would leave some articles in
my account so I could read them later.

I never read them later. Pocket became a place that I sent articles to die.

Fast forward to earlier this week. On a whim I decided that my digital hoarding
of articles had gone on long enough and deleted my Pocket account. This came
days after deleting AdVenture Capitalist from my iPad as it had also sunk it’s
claws into my free time.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with Pocket (it’s not you, it’s me ;). In
fact, I know quite a few people that use it and other similar services quite
successfully. That’s just not me.

So what’s the alternative? Honestly, I’m not entirely sure yet. Part of me wants
to focus more on reading books instead of blog posts, so I could simply go that
route. I’ve also found that the really great content keeps popping up on my
radar and I end up reading it, so I may just run with that.